The skinny fellow walked quickly back to me and staring coldly from under his straight black eyebrows says: "You have an objection?"
I allowed I did not, but I also requested he state a reason why in the goddamn hell he thought I did.
"You just spoke my name," he says.
"I don't know your name," says I.
"It," he says, "is Earp."
"Oh," I says, laughing, "What I did was belch."
He knocked me down.
Well, sir, I arose directly with my gun in my hand, but Earp strode away, giving me the choice of ventilating his back or agreeing with him that the incident was closed. But damn if I was going to let him set the terms, so I throws some spectacular abuse at him in front of them other hunters, and he turns and comes back.
"Draw, you goddamn Belch you," says I, for in that measured stride he had come within ten feet of me and his weapon was still holstered, his hands swinging freely as he walked. But onward he come, and I found it impossible to raise my gun and shoot him down until he went for his, but he never. Finally, having reached a range of one foot, he detained my right wrist with his wiry fingers of his left hand, drew his pistol, and struck me over the head with its heavy barrel. I was cold-cocked for fair.
This was the technique called "buffaloing," and it was Wyatt Earp's favorite when he became a marshal later on. In all his violent life, he only killed two or three men, but he buffaloed several thousand. I guess he was the meanest man I ever come across. In a similar circumstance, Wild Bill would have killed his opponent. Not Earp, he was too mean. To draw on you meant he considered you a worthy antagonist; but he didn't; he thought most other people was too inferior to kill, so he would just crack their skulls. I don't know how it worked, but when he looked at you as if you was garbage, you might not have agreed with him, but you had sufficient doubt to stay your gun hand a minute, and by then he had cold-cocked you.
---from Little Big Man by Thomas Berger.
Berger is not nearly enough well known, it seems to me. "Little Big Man" is a great book (and I had forgotten that particular scene).
Posted by: spaghetti happens | Sunday, October 01, 2006 at 04:29 PM